Thursday, May 25, 2017

If you asked me what the first Polonia Bros. movie I ever saw I could probably narrow it down to HOLLA IF I KILL YOU I remember just not liking that film at all. If anyone recommended going down the long, twisted path of Polonia Bros. films, I would not have recommended this as the first foray into their body of work.
Then FEEDERS came along and I was hooked.
Over the years I have watched many of their movies and I thought it was odd that no one had written anything in any depth about them. I had this same thought process when I started on my book of Michael Legge films. These are great movies and people should know as much about them as possible.
I like to share my obsessions.
The process for these books is a little low tech. I watch the movie with a notepad. I make notes on the film and then make sure to get every credit written down. I believe that everyone who makes these movies deserves credit where credit is due.
Then, luckily, I have slow time between calls at work so I'm able to transcribe my notes at work. Then I write a review of the film that goes between the film overview and the credits.
It sounds like a lot of work, but this is just my way of doing things.
I actually managed to get an interview with The Polonia Bros. and Jon McBride before John passed away. It is a great interview and I may include it in the book.
I have decided to add a couple of things to the Polonia book. Besides people telling stories of working with them I am asking Mark Polonia one question about each film. They will accompany each film overview/review/credits.
Also, this time I am going with alphabetical instead of chronological. With this many films I believe that it will work better that way.
I have finished six reviews. I'm trying to get at least one a week, maybe more as time allows.
At the average rate of 1400 words per film this thing will be over 100K the longest thing I have ever written.
Sheesh!
The things i get myself into.

Thursday, May 11, 2017

Every so often a film pops up in my inbox that looks interesting and I tell them to go ahead and send me a screener. I don't do it as often as I did in the past, but, hey this one had Sarah Nicklin in it. Who was I to say no.
For those of you that don't know who Sarah Nicklin is, well first, shame on you and, second, there is a magnificent director named Richard Griffin who has given us excellent films like;
ATOMIC BRAIN INVASION
DISCO EXORCIST
BEYOND THE DUNWICH HORROR
Sarah was in all of these along with her then husband, Michael Reed. Both of them are in this one.
Let's run it down shall we?
First off, it's a found footage film. Get the groaning out of the way and get back here. I can't stand found footage movies. So, if I'm still here that's a great sign.
Anyway, it starts with a disclaimer from the government about the footage they found. Due to the Freedom of Information Act anyone can watch this.
That works for me.
Our foursome are Amber, Joe, Morgan and Dave. They have heard of a place that is where the chupacabra dwell and they are out to prove it. The first road to where they need to go is barricaded. The second one has a ranger guarding it and some shifty guy who the ranger refers to as a biologist.
Yeah, right, a biologist in fatigues with a weird looking tank strapped to his back.
I ain't buying it.
Anyway, these kooky kids manage to get around the ranger and deep into chupacabra territory. (Yeah, see what I did there? Funny, huh?)
So, they run into other campers, get drunk. The other campers wander off to get slaughtered while our gang keeps looking.
Sometimes, the thing you want to find should just be left alone.
Right?

Since it touts itself as a found footage film, I start looking for illogical things. There were a few camera angles that no one would have shot. Shots of the car driving down the road. Things like that. One time a character grabbed a camera and ran for it. I do not believe for an instance he would have done that, but what are you going to do?
That being said, I liked the movie. Sure, Sarah Nicklin's character, Amber, could have worn more convincing clothes. Most people don't camp in a mini skirt, but she has nice legs so I'm going to let that pass. It was clever to introduce the other campers so we got some nudity to help crank up the exploitation quotient of the movie. The blood and guts looked good and I was happy they showed the monsters.
So many of these don't show the monster and I think that's a mistake. The whole reason for being there is to see the monster not just hear some passable foley work.
There is lots of professional looking camera work instead of nothing but GoPro and shaky cam. Sure, I get what your going for with that, but you can't get a guy to hold the camera steady for some exposition shots?

So, in the end, while this has not won me over to the found footage form of film making I liked this a lot. It produces an eerie effect overall, the monsters work and there are questions that we never get an answer to. Maybe we could get a sequel? Chupacabra Territory: The Biologist. That would be cool. And Morgan was the coolest one of the bunch. Made me laugh out loud more than once.

Tuesday, May 9, 2017

A lot of you will look at that title and figure the old man is getting ready to go on a rant. Yeah, I could, but I decided this might be a good learning experience for everyone. See, I go to new movies all the time. I watch new shows. No problem at all. But, you have to remember one thing. Star Wars came out in 1977. That was the year I turned fifteen. Yeah, I get that I'm old, I understand. But, here's the thing. You find out when you were fifteen and go see what movies were made that year. It's easy to get a list.
Here's mine; (Yes I expect you to at least glance over the list. I'll meet you down below.)

Airport
‘77

Andy
Warhol’s Bad

Annie
Hall

Audrey
Rose

The Bad
News Bears In Breaking Training

Billy Jack Goes to Washington

Black Sunday

Breaker! Breaker!

A Bridge Too Far

The Car

The Choirboys

Cinderella

Citizen’s Band

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Cross of Iron

Damnation Alley

The Day of the Animals

The Deep

Demon Seed

Desperate Living

The Domino Principle

Drive-In Massacre

Eaten Alive

Empire of the Ants

Equus

Exorcist 2: The Heretic

For the Love of Benji

Fun With Dick And Jane

The Gauntlet

The Goodbye Girl

Grand Theft Auto

Greased Lightning

Herbie Goes to Monte
Carlo

Heroes

High Anxiety

The Hills Have Eyes

The Incredible Melting Man

The Island
of Dr. Moreau

Islands in the Stream

The Kentucky
Fried Movie

Kingdom of the Spiders

Last House on Dead
End Street

The Last Remake of Beau Geste

The Many Adventures of Winnie The Pooh

Martin

New York,
New York

Oh ,God!

Orca

The Other Side of Midnight

Outlaw Blues

The People That Time Forgot

Pete’s Dragon

Planet of the Dinosaurs

Pumping Iron

Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown

Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure

The Rescuers

Rollercoaster

Rolling Thunder

Ruby

Satan’s Cheerleaders

Semi Tough

The Sentinel

Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger

Slap Shot

Smokey and the Bandit

Star Wars

Telefon

Tentacles

Valentino

The Van

Viva Knievel!

Which Way Is Up?

Wizards

The World’s Greatest Lover

You Light Up My Life

And these are just the ones that I remember watching. Some good, some bad. Some really great movies in there. Some people on their A game with some of these films. Turning fifteen means you are on your way to adult hood, but you're still a kid. Everything is changing in your life and you either plow through it or examine everything.

See, I was lucky. My parents love movies. They loved to take us to movies. We saw them all. My dad took us to see All The President's Men because he thought it was important. That was the year before and all four of us went, even my little sister. Most of the movies up there can bring some long ago memory into laser focus for me. They remind me of that time that I was on the cusp of adulthood.

Of them all Star Wars was one of the more important ones. Remember, we had no VCRs or DVDs. If we wanted to see a movie we went and watched it. The first time we went we were blown away. My dad got us all in the car, we sat there for a minute and he said,

"Do you want to go see it again, right now?"

We all shouted yes and we went back in. One time, it was at The Douglas Drive in with Grey Lady Down and a thunder storm broke out as they were making the run on the Death Star. I stuck my head out the window to see it.

Star Wars was awesome. I watched the two sequels. I read Marvel's comic book. I even got Splinter of the Mind's Eye by Alan Dean Foster and thought that was great. The trilogy ended on a happy note for me and that was fine.

The prequels were just the worst. I watched the first one, snippets of the second one and a couple of pieces of the third one and felt that I had not missed a thing. Those weren't made for me. I had my three Star Wars movies and I was very happy with that.

The real reason I'm not watching any of the new Star Wars movies?

I don;t need them.

I have my Star Wars movies and that's just fine with me.

Look at that list again.

Isn't that a great list?

Just reading it makes me want to go and watch at least ten of them right now.

Thursday, April 20, 2017

Evil Bong is back and Lucy Furr has reopened the shop on Venice Beach. She worships Satan and when she kills a stoner it opens a very vagina looking gateway from Sexy Hell and EeBee has returned to the land of the living. All Lucy Furr wants is to get to Hell and EeBee is still fixated on world domination through weed. With GingerDead Man out to kill everyone EeBee and Rabbit join forces to create GingerWeed Man. A combination of GingerDead Man and some potent weed to go to Sexy Hell and challenge Lord BeezleBuzz to a bake off and I do not mean cookies.
I have watched all of these. From the first one that was smart enough to get Tommy Chong in the flick to recent entries like the cleverly named Evil Bong 420 and Evil Bong High Five. They are full of green screen effects, people smoking some serious bud and just being downright silly. This one is no exception and it is always nice to see Sonny Carl Davis as Rabbit once again. The man is always a delight. My one criticism is that there was no Larnell (John PAtrick Jordan). While Rabbit is always the driving comedic force in the films I always felt that Larnell was the heart of the films. To not have him in this entry seems like a misstep to me.
I love the Alex Maxson who does the voice of Gingerdead Man. He channels Gary Busey so well and every time he talks I just laugh out loud. I look at these as more than annual episodes of a series than movies.
For silly fun you can do worse than Evil Bong 666. If you subscribe to HULU you can even watch it for free.

Saturday, April 15, 2017

We have all known about this new season for a while. Everyone was super excited, including me. That was until I was told that Joel Hodgson would not be the host of the show. My interest level dropped immediately. I do like Patton Oswalt and Felicia Day. But, who was going to be the host?
Jonah Ray from The Nerdist.
Yeah, I don't like Jonah any time I have seen him or heard him. So, I think this is going to go badly for me.
I started to nit pick the reasons I didn't like the new show.
Then it dawned on me.
Why bother?
Of the original run I only liked Joel. I stuck around because TVs Frank was on, but when he left I was done. Sure, Dr. Forrester was fine, but he needed someone to bounce stuff off of.
I loathed Pearl.
I watched when they first came out and have fond memories of friends and family laughing out loud watching the show.
YouTube has a channel that plays every episode and they look pretty good. Makes me feel like I'm circulating the tapes. I put it on to sleep to almost every night.
So, I'm glad that they have brought MST3K to a new generation of people. When I watched the original I thought it was great.
I have plenty of shows to watch now that I really enjoy and see no reason to watch something that is trying to be what was once one of my favorite shows that I still enjoy to this day.

Movie Sign Off.

P.S. Yeah, also not watching the new Prison Break either. I buried Michael Scofield years ago.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Those titles may look familiar to you and you really couldn't be more wrong. I love all the free channels on my ROKU and the lovely Martha Waltz discovered one for me a while ago called GRINDHOUSE GRIT. I do loves me some Grindhouse flicks and the badder the better.

At first I thought MONSTROSITY might be the Andy Milligan flick, but the 2007 date told me otherwise. Andy had been dead for a while.
In this one we have a carnival freak named Monstrosity who gets free from his master, kills a bunch of people and makes a beeline for a nearby factory where he kills the owner's son and his woman. He cuts her head off and then...nothing.
Ten years pass and someone else has bought he factory and the town legend is that Monstrosity died in a swamp near the factory.
Anyone else buying this? Nope, me neither.
So a group of low life drug dealers and some girls decide to break in, party and have some wild sex. What they don;t know is the man who bought the factory has just discovered millions of dollars in gold and cash, left by the former owner. He needs help getting it out of there so he enlists the drug dealers to help load it up. Each of them will get a cool million.
But, something is killing them. Is it the Monstrosity?
Or is it something worse?
Okay, sure the acting in this thing is dreadful and just one pair of lopsided titties is a little disappointing in the nudity department, but this wasn't that bad. It had a couple of nice twists and turns and the whole concept has been done a million times before.
But, it was a fun little time waster.

This was the only picture on the internet of this movie. Sad.

Then I decided to see something called INTO THE WOODS. It said it was a camping slasher flick and it had a running time of an hour and 18 minutes so it seemed like a safe bet. Some crazy dude ties up his wife and makes his two boys watch. He is sent to prison and the boys go into foster care. It's worth noting that crazy dad is also crazy drug dealer with a sword in the other movie. I had no idea that the films had any common denominator. Lucky I guess.
A group of kids go camping and it doesn't take long before the body count starts to go up. But, who's doing the killing? Have the boys become crazed killers? Are they among the group and no one knows it?
This seems like a lot of questions and the ending is pretty telegraphed.As camper slasher flicks go it ranks down at the bottom. They did use a lot of local music in their movie which is always a good thing, but the nudity is non existent and that is the death kiss of any slasher flick. Guys, if you're going to make a slasher flick you have to make sure at least one of your girlfriends is going to show off something. Otherwise, people like me are going to call you movie out for what it is; amateurish and crap.
I did laugh when I saw all the MySpace urls for the bands. There was even a geocities site. I had no idea that was even a thing anymore.

Monstrosity was pretty good though.

I like to put up trailers for flicks so people can get a taste of the punishment I put myself through. Yeah, neither of these had anything. Even their official sites were taken down. If you have a ROKU the channel is Grindhouse Grit and you can watch it an many others for free.

Tuesday, January 3, 2017

SO, that year sucked, eh? I managed to release six issues of Divine Exploitation before I realized that a schedule is the last thing my little zine needs. I plan on two issues a year and that should be fine for me.
In other writing news I did write two books;
THOU SHALT DIE inspired by a Linc Polderman drawing. It's my first attempt at a first person, hard boiled crime book. I set a minimum word count of 30K and managed to beat that.
KILLER F@#KING SQUIRRELS managed to get done before the end of the year and just went up for sale at Create Space. It should be easy to find. There are no other books with that title. I checked.
Finally, I have read comic book sites for a long time and they just manage to piss me off for one reason or another. I think the biggest problem in comics sites is that everyone is complaining about stuff.
I am guilty of this as well. I have things that tick me off about the current state of comics. Ask me about Captain America sometime.
But there is also so much great stuff going on. If you told me I would own every issue of Jem and The Holograms I would have called you crazy, but I do. Aquaman is one of my favorite comic series out right now. It's a fun time in the world of comics.
So, here's what's gonna happen here.
I buy my comics every two weeks. I get paid and head for the comic book store. I will then read said comics and review them here.
But here's the catch. I'm reviewing them in the sense of what I like. Not some weird standard review thingie that a lot of the sites seem to embrace. Like it, love it, hate it, I will be honest and upfront with each comic that I buy. I think this is a more honest type of reviewing because I'm not getting any freebies here. I pay for everything I read.
I'll also put up covers of the comics I review just to make sure everyone knows what I'm referring to.
In addition 2017 will see me working on my book concerning the films of The Polonia Brothers. Will it get done in 2017? No idea. Those two make a lot of movies.
I am also going to keep track of every movie I watched in 2017 so look for that list in about 12 months.
So, throw in two print issues of Divine and maybe another book for NaNoWriMo this year and I think 2017 might be a tad bit busier.
I'm writing this at work and they don't let me use pictures here so, no picture to go with the post.
Maybe I'll add one later.
Probably not.
Gonna be too damned busy!
:)
NOTE: I ended up putting the comic book reviews at the Penguin Comics Blog. It is located at http://penguincomicsnet.blogspot.com Go read it there